


suggestions on where to place faith, suggestions on what to believe

by sampenning



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, Heaven, Season 9 Coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7830910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sampenning/pseuds/sampenning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The residents of Heaven know something's up when all the angels disappear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	suggestions on where to place faith, suggestions on what to believe

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this imagining the response of Heaven's inhabitants to all the angels leaving around the time of Season 9.
> 
> Title from It's All Understood by Jack Johnson.

The hospital room is quiet.

The speckled tile floor stinks of bleach, making his nose wrinkle every time he takes a breath. He can almost feel it sinking into his skin. His chair is as comfortable as a wood board but he hasn’t moved in a while. Nerves, he guesses.

Amelia lies on the reclined bed, quiet and still but for her eyes following the television screen. Jimmy doesn’t remember what show’s on, to be honest. Maybe it’s MASH. Ames like MASH an unhealthy amount and TV Land is her enabler.

She’d gotten really sick this morning. Lots of throwing up and dry heaving. They hadn’t drank a drop the night before, so Amelia had just passed it off as accidentally eating something with milk. No big, in the scheme of things. She’s done worse on purpose, like the time she ate a whole gallon of cookie dough ice cream in college to win a bet. But then the heaving continued long past there being anything in her stomach and she let Jimmy rush her to the hospital.

They ran through her medication, took some blood, and put her in a bed. It’s just a small hospital here in Pontiac, so she’d been ushered to a room instead of lounging in the ER waiting on tests. The nurses were nice when they drew blood and gave Amelia a dose of a stomach-settling drug Jimmy didn’t have a hope to pronounce on his own.

He watches Amelia as she gives a tired smile at Hawkeye and Frank’s antics. He shifts his weight, feeling his balance waver after a long while on his feet. He stands with his back to the door while eying the accursed blue chair, wondering when the nurse-- _wait, wasn’t he--_

The nurse walks in, a clipboard in hand. Her pinkish-red scrubs are decorated with cartoon images of cupids. He remembers it’s almost St. Valentine’s Day, but it’s vague, only half-there. “Well, Mrs. Novak, I’ve got some good news and bad news. Bad news--”

_“Hey!”_

Jimmy turns at the new voice, looking out the open doorway into the hall as the nurse continues talking. He doesn’t see anything, just the opposite wall, so he turns his attention back to his wife. The nurse barely says two more words before the second voice rings out again-- _“Hey! You! Sex hair!”_

Jimmy scowls and runs a hand through his messy hair. _Not this again,_ he thinks, _they promised last time they’d stay away for good._

“Dude!” A second new voice calls out, deeper and twangier than the second. Jimmy's scowl deepened.

“One step closer and I swear I’ll put a banishing sigil on this door and send you back to base camp,” Jimmy threatens without turning around, keeping his eyes on his wife. Riding shotgun with an angel for a couple months taught him some useful things, and he’s not afraid to use them.

The nurse delivers the good news, Amelia’s face lighting up as she turns her face over to the blue chair, gushing with happiness.

“No wings here, compadre.” The second voice says, closer. Jimmy turns on his heel in surprise. There’s two people in the doorway. One is lanky man in beat-up jeans, a cut-off shirt, and a mullet that would’ve made Billy Ray Cyrus jealous. He’s accompanied by a young lithe woman with long blond hair who looks decidedly unimpressed with everything. She looks like she could flawlessly switch between skewering him for supper and ringing his doorbell to sell Thin Mints.

“Who-” he says, stuttering, his voice cracking from disuse and shock. “Who are you? Did they send you to mess with me?”

The woman eyes him. “We’re no angels.”

“But we’ll kill your landlord,” the man adds with a grin before the woman smacks him on the arm.

“I-- what?” Jimmy’s eyes dart between them. “You’re… not? How?”

“Several elaborate math equations and mastering some angel hoodoo, nothin’ special,” the man says with a satisfied grin as the nurse finishes talking and turns to leave. The duo part for her to exit, a purely human instinct. Angels wouldn’t have moved, they would’ve just let the nurse pass right through them. The door clicks behind her, and Amelia’s voice behind him grows in volume as she babbles to the empty blue chair.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” the woman says softly, leaning slightly to the right to see around Jimmy, “what’s going on here?”

Jimmy crosses his arms and turns. Amelia is as energetic as he remembers her that day, about to bounce off the walls after the nurse’s announcement. A fond smile unfolds on his face as he watches her face flush with excitement. “It’s--” he tries to start, “it’s the day we found out she was pregnant with Claire. We’d wanted a kid for a--” he takes a deep breath-- ”a very long time.”

There’s a hand on his shoulder and he gasps as he twists around. He hasn’t felt an actual weight on his being since-

“My name’s Jo,” the woman says, gesturing towards herself and suddenly Jimmy does remember her, “And that’s Ash.”

“Hola,” Ash says with a mock salute, his mullet bobbing.

“You’re, uh, Castiel’s vessel, right?” Jo asks sheepishly, like she’s ashamed she doesn’t know his name. At this point he’d be surprised if half of Heaven didn’t know his name. The human who played host to the rebel.

Jimmy nods stiffly. “Jimmy Novak.”

“Nice to put a name to a borrowed face,” Jo says, trying for humor, but he doesn’t feel like obliging her with a laugh.

“What do you want me for?”

Jo bites her lip and looks at Ash. “Well,” she starts, “have you noticed any problems with your memories?”

Jimmy tilts his head in confusion and Ash speaks up- “Have your greatest hits been feelin’ like an over-used VHS? Parts of ‘em in the corners of your eyes feel like static? A couple seconds of lag between moments? Lights flashing on an’ off?”

Jimmy nods, dumbfounded.

“Normally you’d report them to Jo’s lovebird Hannah--” here Jo smacks Ash again-- “But she’s gone. All of ‘em are gone. Angel radio’s been dead silent for months.”

Jimmy’s brows knit together. “Isn’t that a good thing? They’re all out of our hair.”

“Sometimes, yeah,” Jo says with a shrug and a curt nod, “but not now. Something’s rotten in Denmark, Novak, and we ain’t waiting around for Heaven it guide itself.”

“Then I’m gonna ask again,” Jimmy snaps, his voice so dark and angry that the vicious-looking Jo Harvelle hunches down, “what do you want with me?”  


He’s had enough of Heaven’s problems and politics. There’s only so many times you can be interrogated about a wavelength of celestial intent you bunked with for a few months before you begin to despise every last one of them. He’s become an oxymoron, he knows, experiencing as many religion-affirming moments as a person can have and becoming disillusioned with the whole set up. Life was easier and sweeter, he muses sullenly, back when he was an intern at the station, freshly married to his high school sweetheart and living in a dumpy apartment.

He looks back at Ames, who’s still twisted around on the bed to talk with an invisible figure in the blue seat. A dark pink flush sits high on her cheeks and her blond hair is stuck to her head from sweat. Then she smiles, that bright smile that had him falling in love on a daily basis, and he remembers ages ago when this happened that he thought she’d never looked more beautiful.

Jimmy turns back to the two Heaven-crashers. “Well,” he asks, impatiently.

“No one knows an angel better than a vessel,” Jo says solemnly, all traces of hesitation gone, as if sensing his exasperation with all things Heaven and hell-bent to capitalize on it. “And we need more people in the know to help us.”

“Help you with what?”

“To figure out what’s going on, first of all.” Jo shares a dangerous smile with Ash and says, “then maybe we’ll see what we can do about raising a little Hell up in here.”

Jimmy looks between the two of them. He looks back at Ames sitting on the bed, still talking with invisible him. He remembers that conversation. They were talking about baby names-- Claire if it’s a girl, Peter if it’s a boy, maybe we should go with a name like Alex until we know.  


It was all so long ago. He’s remembered it so many times over the years, played it over twice that up here.  


It was all so recent. He remembers the last time he saw Claire, the real Claire, his Claire. He made Castiel promise to keep the other angels away from his family. It was his last demand, really. His last request. And if something’s gone wrong with the angels and Castiel can’t keep his promise… well.

Jimmy looks back at them. “I’m in.”

“Awesome,” Jo says with a smile, Ash slowly nodding his approval behind her. “Do you remember the Roadhouse?”


End file.
